I follow maps that lose me more than walking blind,
I pacman through the printed google route
Towards my future home,
I clutch my wallet.
The street signs wave their hands,
Catcalling me in their husky foreign language.
The U-Bahn has too many rabbitholes.

A month from now, I’ll have forgotten the novelty of your caresses;
I’ll build myself a makeshift foreign fortress
And armour, to defend my tourist booty.

A year from now, I will have left you, a rhotic ‘r’ my only dowry.

But now I wait – for you to jump.
My teeth are sharpened,
My suitcase full of expectations.

Today I land.

Berlin (in), September 2012

II.

Today I leave:

I drop my key into your river’s open palms,
So warm and sweaty.
The keyhole winks; the staircase muss schweigen.
I walk away as slowly as I can
Along last year’s cobbled footsteps
As time rolls back
Until it’s up.
A tram aufwiedersehens and forgets me.

A year ago, I came here speechless.
My eyes were foreign street musicians who came to busk
And couldn’t wait to leave for warmer winters.

A month ago, I started packing.
I filled my bags with squatted buildings, fallen walls and squandered heartbeats,
Two snowflakes from a lonely winter past
And names of German writers.
I almost left.

But once I packed, I suddenly arrived in earnest.

Since then, the neck of time grew longer,
The pre-war building I am leaving smells of home:
No more a freshly-painted exile.
The summer days curled back into Klein bottles
Whose beer never ends.
Your needle tower has become a compass
I dread to lose:
Inside and outside are one without it.
My speechlessness is gone:
I hear, and see, and speak, and breathe you,
Breathless,
I cannot drink enough.

A week ago I met a writer.
His eyes were bright, his shadow deep,
He fought against it in your sleepless city lights
And painted worlds on beer bottles
Astride a windowsill
At midnight.

A day ago I turned around
And noticed I had been
A mirror.
I’m looking back into my face to see the future,
But all that’s left is a reflection.
The key is lost, the river drank it,
And now